Hi Jennifer, you can cultivate your mind as well as your garden, weed out the invasive species, rotivate and till so that you're ready to accept new ideas and grow them. Both are hard work and take determination but worth it as you said. Thanks for your comment

Like armouring the mind and heart to nourish well what is good and beneficial, against the onslaughts of enemies intent to harm or harm the good and happy things growing well, and planting bad and depressed thoughts (and I would say God and his Word can help in the work of protection of the garden and good cultivation). Rhiannon

oh Jane, this poem resonates so much with me!!! My garden was a drive when we moved in. I paid someone with a bulldozer to dig up the concrete and gravel but what was left under that was hard packed cinder I think, which I managed to break with a small pickaxe and over the years get rid of so roots can go down, though solid bedrock is only a metre below ground level. I have so many rocks, I don't know what to do with them, and like you have become adept at walling now :0) Everything you write of here is how I feel :0) It is so important to me to believe I am looking after my bit of Earth, letting it work again! Whenever there are bees or hoverflies or moths (bit shadey for butterflies) I am so happy. And though we feed the birds, when I see our blackbirds with their beaks all full of insects disappear and come back, knowing they are looking after their families. I love this poem, how you explain what it feels like to get out one of the huge rocks I can only roll they are so heavy

And plucked the lump stone

To form freethinking loam beloved

By all who wish to grow their minds

while all around people are putting down concrete and tarmac and cutting down trees, when it is the last thing the world needs. Opinions and prejudice as lumpstone and old concrete

Thanks Di_Hard. It sounds like you put in a lot of effort and are reaping the rewards, observing the return of nature. I too get a lot of blackbirds and thrushes collecting insects which I think has a lot to do with avoiding chemicals and slug pellets etc. Most people would balk at the idea of digging up concrete to reclaim a garden but you have brought your little plot back to life to host hundreds of organisms.

I found so many ways to interpret this, one, it sounds like a marvelous garden planted and protected, but two, I feel it is a soul that is planted and defended in that garden and will not venture beyond the wall to where it is not protected. I especially loved the words: (Kept out the brigand beasts, who innocently smiled as they trampled saplings dreams, now inside the bordered scape,we are serene these living things.)

We all deserve to be safe from brigand beasts. Well done, and well deserved cherries.

Hi Penny you are right, I was running two themes through this peice, a literal garden and also my mind and how we build walls and cultivate mechanisms to protect us from harm but also work to keep our minds loose and open. Those brigand beasts trample about without a second thought. Thanks for your kind comment.